Kristiane Koontz recently used ChatGPT 4.0 to plan her summer vegetable and herb garden.
“My prompt was fairly detailed, telling it my climate, micro climate and soils and asking it to select varieties of vegetables and herbs that would do well where I am,” said Koontz, executive vice president and director of treasury services and payments at Zions Bancorp. in Salt Lake City.
“I gave it the dimensions of my garden plot. Over a lengthy discussion it planned my planting down to the spacing, gave me a diagram, instructions on preparing and amending the soil — something I hadn’t thought of — a planting timeline, a shopping list and more.”
She took the OpenAI model’s advice and her garden is thriving, Koontz said.
“The marigolds it suggested as a companion plant are helping to keep pests away naturally,” she said.
Koontz tries to use generative AI every day and is always on the lookout for new ways to use it.
“I think this is going to be a primary user interface for many tasks in the future,” Koontz told American Banker.
Bankers all over the country are using generative AI in their personal lives as well as at work.
“I’ve found the more we use these tools in everyday life, the more we find places they can be really useful,” Dominic Venturo, chief digital officer at U.S. Bank in Minneapolis, told American Banker. He uses Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot.
“Sometimes I’ll use each of them for the same thing and compare how they perform,” he said.
Restaurant reservations and travel
“I am a foodie and like to go to the trendy restaurants when I travel,” Chris Nichols, director of capital markets at SouthState Bank in Winter Haven, Florida, told American Banker.
Nichols has set up an agent to run an algorithm that pulls information from the Michelin Guide, the James Beard Foundation, The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, the Beli app, Eater website, Google Review and Open Table ratings to find a good restaurant in whatever neighborhood he’s going to. The agent then uses Resy or Open Table to book the restaurant.
“I used to spend hours trying to find the perfect restaurant in a city,” Nichols said. “Now, it’s minutes.”
Nichols has set up similar agents to help with travel arrangements, home maintenance and home automation.
Koontz also uses gen AI to plan vacations.
“I recently planned a five-day vacation complete with options for activities, restaurants and hotels, and was amazed by the quality of what I got,” Koontz said. “It saved me a lot of time and gave me more personalized recommendations than I would get in searches.”
She said that if she’s using ChatGPT to plan a multi-stop vacation, she must include instructions in her prompts to minimize backtracking.
Venturo has found generative AI especially useful when planning to visit multiple places and coordinating with others.
“I’ve found that taking the time to give the AI tool enough detail makes a big difference — as of course it does in most cases with Gen AI,” he said. “If I’m planning a weekend of mountain biking or hiking, it’s especially useful to me. I can tell it where I generally want to go, how long I have, and how far I’m willing to drive, ride or hike and it makes great recommendations — and much faster than traditional search.”
Home life
Derek Waldron, chief analytics officer at JPMorganChase who recently accepted American Banker’s
“I have young kids, so I use it to create stories for them,” Waldron told American Banker.
Venturo uses generative AI at home when he’s cooking.
“Normally my go-to themes are Asian or Hispanic foods because I love international cuisine and know a few of those dishes well,” he said. “Recently, when I asked Gemini for ideas on what to do with beef and some salad fixings, ground beef biryani and a cucumber salad came back as an option — it was delicious.”
Venturo uses generative AI for meal prep inspiration, telling it what ingredients he has on hand and the things he likes to eat, and it offers up new ideas.
Koontz also uses generative AI to come up with recipes based on what’s in her refrigerator, as well as to write birthday cards and reviews for contractors.
Thinking and learning
“I use [generative AI] to push my own thinking as my own coach, my own teacher, my own mentor, and increasingly over time I’m pushing the envelope of the things that I can do with it,” Waldron said.
“A year and a half ago it was very much just for synthesis, summary and question and answer. Now I’m using it as a thought partner to help me think through incomplete ideas to help become a real sort of sparring partner to push my thinking,” Waldron said.
In the same vein, Koontz uses ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude as conversation partners to learn about and explore trends and new ideas.
“I had a 90-minute chat on a recent Saturday morning about all things payments,” Koontz said. “I find it’s a great way for me to learn as I can direct the information where my curiosity takes me versus staying focused on what the author of an article wants to cover. There are positives and negatives to this, but it has accelerated my learning.”
Nichols also uses ChatGPT to learn about new subjects.
“Being able to have a conversation and ask questions is unique and suits my learning style well,” he said. “It has significantly improved by information retention. I carry on 30- to 45-minute conversations with AI to explore various topics throughout the week.”
Brian Merritt, chief technical officer at Bankwell Financial Group, a $3 billion-asset bank based in New Canaan, Connecticut, uses AI to research topics of personal interest including quantum physics, cosmology, biology and other sciences.
“I use it to provide quick summaries of long-form articles when I don’t have time to read them,” he said.
Health and medicine
Merritt uses generative AI to develop meal plans that will help him meet his nutrition and fitness goals.
“I use it to help me design lifestyle and wellness protocols to maximize my health and performance, such as supplement routines, skin care, self care routines, workout routines, recipes, and so on,” he told American Banker.
And he uses it to help analyze health information such as bloodwork and lab reports to inform his approach to self care and have informed conversations with doctors and other health care providers.
Outdoor activities and hobbies
Merritt uses AI to identify animals and plants when he goes on hikes.
iNaturalist, Seek and Animal Identifier are a few apps that can recognize animals from photos. PictureBird can identify birds based on photos or audio clips. PlantNet can identify plants based on images.
Venturo uses gen AI when working on older cars.
“I’ve found that if I ask good questions in my prompts, I can more quickly find important information or tips from car forums or blogs I never would have discovered,” he said.
Personal finances
Merritt lets AI analyze his investments and make changes to his portfolio and trading strategy.
Koontz is using several generative AI models to plan the reinvestment of some CDs that are maturing, based on investment guidelines she provides.
“I was able to get specific recommendations beyond what I would have considered, including instructions for how to execute the transactions within the platforms I use,” she said. “I’m comparing the results between the ChatGPT and Claude, and as a final step I’ll ask each one to critique the other’s plan.”
Koontz envisions a future in which generative AI does financial planning and replaces financial advisors for some people.
“In the future, we may see a brokerage or bank connected AI agent execute these transactions automatically on behalf of clients,” she said. This raises other questions, such as where liability lies for errors in instructions or hallucinations.